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Models, Systems and Applications for Sensors in Cyber Physical Systems

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 August 2017) | Viewed by 153611

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Interests: parallel computing; distributed computing; cloud and grid computing; and computer networks
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Cyber Physical Systems (referred to as CPS) are next next-generation smart systems, which integrate computing, communications, and control systems as a unification. In CPS, physical and software components are deeply intertwined, involving transdisciplinary approaches, merging the theories of cybernetics, mechatronics, and design and process science. The key techniques of CPS include physical/mechanical systems, embedded systems, sensors and actuators, computer network and human machine interface. The joint behavior of the “Models” and “Systems” of sensors in CPS is critical. Additionally, the “Applications” of sensors in CPS include smart grid, autonomous automobile systems, medical monitoring, process control systems, robotics systems, and automatic pilot avionics. Therefore, when we evolve towards CPS from the traditional wireless sensor networks (WSN), we will need novel approaches for “Models”, “Systems” and “Applications” of sensors in CPS.

Many sensors in CPS solutions are already available today: from standardized solutions that are widely applicable, but further limited in flexibility, to proprietary solutions tailored to a specific vertical market and that are not interoperable.

The aim of this Special Issue is to serve as a single-track forum for reporting the recent advances in all aspects of sensors in cyber-physical systems from theory, tools, applications, systems to testbeds. This Special Issue aims to explore the vast spectrum of these technologies with original and review articles that focus on the recent advances in the development of modeling and implementation for CPS. In addition, applications of sensors in CPS in transportation, energy, water, medical, robotic systems, social awareness, emergency management and other challenges for the 21st century are all welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • New emerging models for sensors in CPS
  • New emerging systems for sensors in CPS
  • New applications and testbeds for sensors in CPS
  • physical/mechanical systems for sensors in CPS
  • Embedded systems for sensors in CPS
  • Sensors and actuators for CPS
  • Human machine interface for sensors in CPS
  • Energy-efficient protocols for sensors in CPS
  • Communication protocols for sensors in CPS
  • Security/ privacy/reliability architectures for sensors in CPS
  • Big data mining for sensors in CPS
  • Parallel and Distributed Systems for sensors in CPS
  • Mobile computing and Cloud computing for sensors in CPS
  • Vehicular sensors in Cyber-Physical Systems
  • Tools and frameworks for designing, deploying and maintaining intelligent sensors in CPS

Prof. Dr. Weizhe Zhang
Prof. Dr. Sabah Mohammed
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • cyber physical systems
  • sensors and actuators
  • models
  • systems
  • applications
  • embedded systems

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Published Papers (24 papers)

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Research

18995 KiB  
Article
A Decentralized Compositional Framework for Dependable Decision Process in Self-Managed Cyber Physical Systems
by Peng Zhou, Decheng Zuo, Kun-Mean Hou and Zhan Zhang
Sensors 2017, 17(11), 2580; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17112580 - 9 Nov 2017
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5115
Abstract
Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) need to interact with the changeable environment under various interferences. To provide continuous and high quality services, a self-managed CPS should automatically reconstruct itself to adapt to these changes and recover from failures. Such dynamic adaptation behavior introduces systemic [...] Read more.
Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) need to interact with the changeable environment under various interferences. To provide continuous and high quality services, a self-managed CPS should automatically reconstruct itself to adapt to these changes and recover from failures. Such dynamic adaptation behavior introduces systemic challenges for CPS design, advice evaluation and decision process arrangement. In this paper, a formal compositional framework is proposed to systematically improve the dependability of the decision process. To guarantee the consistent observation of event orders for causal reasoning, this work first proposes a relative time-based method to improve the composability and compositionality of the timing property of events. Based on the relative time solution, a formal reference framework is introduced for self-managed CPSs, which includes a compositional FSM-based actor model (subsystems of CPS), actor-based advice and runtime decomposable decisions. To simplify self-management, a self-similar recursive actor interface is proposed for decision (actor) composition. We provide constraints and seven patterns for the composition of reliability and process time requirements. Further, two decentralized decision process strategies are proposed based on our framework, and we compare the reliability with the static strategy and the centralized processing strategy. The simulation results show that the one-order feedback strategy has high reliability, scalability and stability against the complexity of decision and random failure. This paper also shows a way to simplify the evaluation for dynamic system by improving the composability and compositionality of the subsystem. Full article
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3612 KiB  
Article
A Machine Learning Approach to Argo Data Analysis in a Thermocline
by Yu Jiang, Yu Gou, Tong Zhang, Kai Wang and Chengquan Hu
Sensors 2017, 17(10), 2225; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17102225 - 28 Sep 2017
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6345
Abstract
With the rapid development of sensor networks, big marine data arises. To efficiently use these data to predict thermoclines, we propose a machine learning approach. We firstly focus on analyzing how temperature, salinity, and geographic location features affect the formation of thermocline. Then, [...] Read more.
With the rapid development of sensor networks, big marine data arises. To efficiently use these data to predict thermoclines, we propose a machine learning approach. We firstly focus on analyzing how temperature, salinity, and geographic location features affect the formation of thermocline. Then, an improved model based on entropy value method for the thermocline selection is demonstrated. The experiments adopt BOA Argo data sets and the experimental results show that our novel model can predict thermoclines and related data effectively. Full article
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1203 KiB  
Article
Avionic Air Data Sensors Fault Detection and Isolation by means of Singular Perturbation and Geometric Approach
by Paolo Castaldi, Nicola Mimmo and Silvio Simani
Sensors 2017, 17(10), 2202; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17102202 - 25 Sep 2017
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 6846
Abstract
Singular Perturbations represent an advantageous theory to deal with systems characterized by a two-time scale separation, such as the longitudinal dynamics of aircraft which are called phugoid and short period. In this work, the combination of the NonLinear Geometric Approach and the [...] Read more.
Singular Perturbations represent an advantageous theory to deal with systems characterized by a two-time scale separation, such as the longitudinal dynamics of aircraft which are called phugoid and short period. In this work, the combination of the NonLinear Geometric Approach and the Singular Perturbations leads to an innovative Fault Detection and Isolation system dedicated to the isolation of faults affecting the air data system of a general aviation aircraft. The isolation capabilities, obtained by means of the approach proposed in this work, allow for the solution of a fault isolation problem otherwise not solvable by means of standard geometric techniques. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations, exploiting a high fidelity aircraft simulator, show the effectiveness of the proposed Fault Detection and Isolation system. Full article
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2957 KiB  
Article
A Parameter Communication Optimization Strategy for Distributed Machine Learning in Sensors
by Jilin Zhang, Hangdi Tu, Yongjian Ren, Jian Wan, Li Zhou, Mingwei Li, Jue Wang, Lifeng Yu, Chang Zhao and Lei Zhang
Sensors 2017, 17(10), 2172; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17102172 - 21 Sep 2017
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 5536
Abstract
In order to utilize the distributed characteristic of sensors, distributed machine learning has become the mainstream approach, but the different computing capability of sensors and network delays greatly influence the accuracy and the convergence rate of the machine learning model. Our paper describes [...] Read more.
In order to utilize the distributed characteristic of sensors, distributed machine learning has become the mainstream approach, but the different computing capability of sensors and network delays greatly influence the accuracy and the convergence rate of the machine learning model. Our paper describes a reasonable parameter communication optimization strategy to balance the training overhead and the communication overhead. We extend the fault tolerance of iterative-convergent machine learning algorithms and propose the Dynamic Finite Fault Tolerance (DFFT). Based on the DFFT, we implement a parameter communication optimization strategy for distributed machine learning, named Dynamic Synchronous Parallel Strategy (DSP), which uses the performance monitoring model to dynamically adjust the parameter synchronization strategy between worker nodes and the Parameter Server (PS). This strategy makes full use of the computing power of each sensor, ensures the accuracy of the machine learning model, and avoids the situation that the model training is disturbed by any tasks unrelated to the sensors. Full article
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3242 KiB  
Article
An Embedded Multi-Agent Systems Based Industrial Wireless Sensor Network
by Mohammed S. Taboun and Robert W. Brennan
Sensors 2017, 17(9), 2112; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17092112 - 14 Sep 2017
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 6311
Abstract
With the emergence of cyber-physical systems, there has been a growing interest in network-connected devices. One of the key requirements of a cyber-physical device is the ability to sense its environment. Wireless sensor networks are a widely-accepted solution for this requirement. In this [...] Read more.
With the emergence of cyber-physical systems, there has been a growing interest in network-connected devices. One of the key requirements of a cyber-physical device is the ability to sense its environment. Wireless sensor networks are a widely-accepted solution for this requirement. In this study, an embedded multi-agent systems-managed wireless sensor network is presented. A novel architecture is proposed, along with a novel wireless sensor network architecture. Active and passive wireless sensor node types are defined, along with their communication protocols, and two application-specific examples are presented. A series of three experiments is conducted to evaluate the performance of the agent-embedded wireless sensor network. Full article
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5350 KiB  
Article
Obstacle Recognition Based on Machine Learning for On-Chip LiDAR Sensors in a Cyber-Physical System
by Fernando Castaño, Gerardo Beruvides, Rodolfo E. Haber and Antonio Artuñedo
Sensors 2017, 17(9), 2109; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17092109 - 14 Sep 2017
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 12383
Abstract
Collision avoidance is an important feature in advanced driver-assistance systems, aimed at providing correct, timely and reliable warnings before an imminent collision (with objects, vehicles, pedestrians, etc.). The obstacle recognition library is designed and implemented to address the design and evaluation of obstacle [...] Read more.
Collision avoidance is an important feature in advanced driver-assistance systems, aimed at providing correct, timely and reliable warnings before an imminent collision (with objects, vehicles, pedestrians, etc.). The obstacle recognition library is designed and implemented to address the design and evaluation of obstacle detection in a transportation cyber-physical system. The library is integrated into a co-simulation framework that is supported on the interaction between SCANeR software and Matlab/Simulink. From the best of the authors’ knowledge, two main contributions are reported in this paper. Firstly, the modelling and simulation of virtual on-chip light detection and ranging sensors in a cyber-physical system, for traffic scenarios, is presented. The cyber-physical system is designed and implemented in SCANeR. Secondly, three specific artificial intelligence-based methods for obstacle recognition libraries are also designed and applied using a sensory information database provided by SCANeR. The computational library has three methods for obstacle detection: a multi-layer perceptron neural network, a self-organization map and a support vector machine. Finally, a comparison among these methods under different weather conditions is presented, with very promising results in terms of accuracy. The best results are achieved using the multi-layer perceptron in sunny and foggy conditions, the support vector machine in rainy conditions and the self-organized map in snowy conditions. Full article
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5563 KiB  
Article
A Tailored Ontology Supporting Sensor Implementation for the Maintenance of Industrial Machines
by Elaheh Maleki, Farouk Belkadi, Mathieu Ritou and Alain Bernard
Sensors 2017, 17(9), 2063; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17092063 - 8 Sep 2017
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5540
Abstract
The longtime productivity of an industrial machine is improved by condition-based maintenance strategies. To do this, the integration of sensors and other cyber-physical devices is necessary in order to capture and analyze a machine’s condition through its lifespan. Thus, choosing the best sensor [...] Read more.
The longtime productivity of an industrial machine is improved by condition-based maintenance strategies. To do this, the integration of sensors and other cyber-physical devices is necessary in order to capture and analyze a machine’s condition through its lifespan. Thus, choosing the best sensor is a critical step to ensure the efficiency of the maintenance process. Indeed, considering the variety of sensors, and their features and performance, a formal classification of a sensor’s domain knowledge is crucial. This classification facilitates the search for and reuse of solutions during the design of a new maintenance service. Following a Knowledge Management methodology, the paper proposes and develops a new sensor ontology that structures the domain knowledge, covering both theoretical and experimental sensor attributes. An industrial case study is conducted to validate the proposed ontology and to demonstrate its utility as a guideline to ease the search of suitable sensors. Based on the ontology, the final solution will be implemented in a shared repository connected to legacy CAD (computer-aided design) systems. The selection of the best sensor is, firstly, obtained by the matching of application requirements and sensor specifications (that are proposed by this sensor repository). Then, it is refined from the experimentation results. The achieved solution is recorded in the sensor repository for future reuse. As a result, the time and cost of the design process of new condition-based maintenance services is reduced. Full article
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2204 KiB  
Article
Network Location-Aware Service Recommendation with Random Walk in Cyber-Physical Systems
by Yuyu Yin, Fangzheng Yu, Yueshen Xu, Lifeng Yu and Jinglong Mu
Sensors 2017, 17(9), 2059; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17092059 - 8 Sep 2017
Cited by 95 | Viewed by 4791
Abstract
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have received much attention from both academia and industry. An increasing number of functions in CPS are provided in the way of services, which gives rise to an urgent task, that is, how to recommend the suitable services in a [...] Read more.
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) have received much attention from both academia and industry. An increasing number of functions in CPS are provided in the way of services, which gives rise to an urgent task, that is, how to recommend the suitable services in a huge number of available services in CPS. In traditional service recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) has been studied in academia, and used in industry. However, there exist several defects that limit the application of CF-based methods in CPS. One is that under the case of high data sparsity, CF-based methods are likely to generate inaccurate prediction results. In this paper, we discover that mining the potential similarity relations among users or services in CPS is really helpful to improve the prediction accuracy. Besides, most of traditional CF-based methods are only capable of using the service invocation records, but ignore the context information, such as network location, which is a typical context in CPS. In this paper, we propose a novel service recommendation method for CPS, which utilizes network location as context information and contains three prediction models using random walking. We conduct sufficient experiments on two real-world datasets, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods and verify that the network location is indeed useful in QoS prediction. Full article
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2575 KiB  
Article
BMRC: A Bitmap-Based Maximum Range Counting Approach for Temporal Data in Sensor Monitoring Networks
by Bin Cao, Wangyuan Chen, Ying Shen, Chenyu Hou, Jung Yoon Kim and Lifeng Yu
Sensors 2017, 17(9), 2051; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17092051 - 7 Sep 2017
Viewed by 4316
Abstract
Due to the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), many feasible deployments of sensor monitoring networks have been made to capture the events in physical world, such as human diseases, weather disasters and traffic accidents, which generate large-scale temporal data. Generally, [...] Read more.
Due to the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), many feasible deployments of sensor monitoring networks have been made to capture the events in physical world, such as human diseases, weather disasters and traffic accidents, which generate large-scale temporal data. Generally, the certain time interval that results in the highest incidence of a severe event has significance for society. For example, there exists an interval that covers the maximum number of people who have the same unusual symptoms, and knowing this interval can help doctors to locate the reason behind this phenomenon. As far as we know, there is no approach available for solving this problem efficiently. In this paper, we propose the Bitmap-based Maximum Range Counting (BMRC) approach for temporal data generated in sensor monitoring networks. Since sensor nodes can update their temporal data at high frequency, we present a scalable strategy to support the real-time insert and delete operations. The experimental results show that the BMRC outperforms the baseline algorithm in terms of efficiency. Full article
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2779 KiB  
Article
Combined Dynamic Time Warping with Multiple Sensors for 3D Gesture Recognition
by Hyo-Rim Choi and TaeYong Kim
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1893; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081893 - 17 Aug 2017
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 7881
Abstract
Cyber-physical systems, which closely integrate physical systems and humans, can be applied to a wider range of applications through user movement analysis. In three-dimensional (3D) gesture recognition, multiple sensors are required to recognize various natural gestures. Several studies have been undertaken in the [...] Read more.
Cyber-physical systems, which closely integrate physical systems and humans, can be applied to a wider range of applications through user movement analysis. In three-dimensional (3D) gesture recognition, multiple sensors are required to recognize various natural gestures. Several studies have been undertaken in the field of gesture recognition; however, gesture recognition was conducted based on data captured from various independent sensors, which rendered the capture and combination of real-time data complicated. In this study, a 3D gesture recognition method using combined information obtained from multiple sensors is proposed. The proposed method can robustly perform gesture recognition regardless of a user’s location and movement directions by providing viewpoint-weighted values and/or motion-weighted values. In the proposed method, the viewpoint-weighted dynamic time warping with multiple sensors has enhanced performance by preventing joint measurement errors and noise due to sensor measurement tolerance, which has resulted in the enhancement of recognition performance by comparing multiple joint sequences effectively. Full article
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3106 KiB  
Article
Path Planning for Non-Circular, Non-Holonomic Robots in Highly Cluttered Environments
by Ricardo Samaniego, Joaquin Lopez and Fernando Vazquez
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1876; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081876 - 15 Aug 2017
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5463
Abstract
This paper presents an algorithm for finding a solution to the problem of planning a feasible path for a slender autonomous mobile robot in a large and cluttered environment. The presented approach is based on performing a graph search on a kinodynamic-feasible lattice [...] Read more.
This paper presents an algorithm for finding a solution to the problem of planning a feasible path for a slender autonomous mobile robot in a large and cluttered environment. The presented approach is based on performing a graph search on a kinodynamic-feasible lattice state space of high resolution; however, the technique is applicable to many search algorithms. With the purpose of allowing the algorithm to consider paths that take the robot through narrow passes and close to obstacles, high resolutions are used for the lattice space and the control set. This introduces new challenges because one of the most computationally expensive parts of path search based planning algorithms is calculating the cost of each one of the actions or steps that could potentially be part of the trajectory. The reason for this is that the evaluation of each one of these actions involves convolving the robot’s footprint with a portion of a local map to evaluate the possibility of a collision, an operation that grows exponentially as the resolution is increased. The novel approach presented here reduces the need for these convolutions by using a set of offline precomputed maps that are updated, by means of a partial convolution, as new information arrives from sensors or other sources. Not only does this improve run-time performance, but it also provides support for dynamic search in changing environments. A set of alternative fast convolution methods are also proposed, depending on whether the environment is cluttered with obstacles or not. Finally, we provide both theoretical and experimental results from different experiments and applications. Full article
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6436 KiB  
Article
Cyber Physical Systems for User Reliability Measurements in a Sharing Economy Environment
by Aria Seo, Junho Jeong and Yeichang Kim
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1868; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081868 - 13 Aug 2017
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5962
Abstract
As the sharing economic market grows, the number of users is also increasing but many problems arise in terms of reliability between providers and users in the processing of services. The existing methods provide shared economic systems that judge the reliability of the [...] Read more.
As the sharing economic market grows, the number of users is also increasing but many problems arise in terms of reliability between providers and users in the processing of services. The existing methods provide shared economic systems that judge the reliability of the provider from the viewpoint of the user. In this paper, we have developed a system for establishing mutual trust between providers and users in a shared economic environment to solve existing problems. In order to implement a system that can measure and control users’ situation in a shared economic environment, we analyzed the necessary factors in a cyber physical system (CPS). In addition, a user measurement system based on a CPS structure in a sharing economic environment is implemented through analysis of the factors to consider when constructing a CPS. Full article
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1155 KiB  
Article
Visual Servoing for an Autonomous Hexarotor Using a Neural Network Based PID Controller
by Carlos Lopez-Franco, Javier Gomez-Avila, Alma Y. Alanis, Nancy Arana-Daniel and Carlos Villaseñor
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1865; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081865 - 12 Aug 2017
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6018
Abstract
In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant attention. However, we face two major drawbacks when working with UAVs: high nonlinearities and unknown position in 3D space since it is not provided with on-board sensors that can measure its position with [...] Read more.
In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant attention. However, we face two major drawbacks when working with UAVs: high nonlinearities and unknown position in 3D space since it is not provided with on-board sensors that can measure its position with respect to a global coordinate system. In this paper, we present a real-time implementation of a servo control, integrating vision sensors, with a neural proportional integral derivative (PID), in order to develop an hexarotor image based visual servo control (IBVS) that knows the position of the robot by using a velocity vector as a reference to control the hexarotor position. This integration requires a tight coordination between control algorithms, models of the system to be controlled, sensors, hardware and software platforms and well-defined interfaces, to allow the real-time implementation, as well as the design of different processing stages with their respective communication architecture. All of these issues and others provoke the idea that real-time implementations can be considered as a difficult task. For the purpose of showing the effectiveness of the sensor integration and control algorithm to address these issues on a high nonlinear system with noisy sensors as cameras, experiments were performed on the Asctec Firefly on-board computer, including both simulation and experimenta results. Full article
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4442 KiB  
Article
Energy-Efficient Hosting Rich Content from Mobile Platforms with Relative Proximity Sensing
by Ki-Woong Park, Younho Lee and Sung Hoon Baek
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1828; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081828 - 8 Aug 2017
Viewed by 3999
Abstract
In this paper, we present a tiny networked mobile platform, termed Tiny-Web-Thing (T-Wing), which allows the sharing of data-intensive content among objects in cyber physical systems. The object includes mobile platforms like a smartphone, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for [...] Read more.
In this paper, we present a tiny networked mobile platform, termed Tiny-Web-Thing (T-Wing), which allows the sharing of data-intensive content among objects in cyber physical systems. The object includes mobile platforms like a smartphone, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for Human-to-Human (H2H), Human-to-Machine (H2M), Machine-to-Human (M2H), and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. T-Wing makes it possible to host rich web content directly on their objects, which nearby objects can access instantaneously. Using a new mechanism that allows the Wi-Fi interface of the object to be turned on purely on-demand, T-Wing achieves very high energy efficiency. We have implemented T-Wing on an embedded board, and present evaluation results from our testbed. From the evaluation result of T-Wing, we compare our system against alternative approaches to implement this functionality using only the cellular or Wi-Fi (but not both), and show that in typical usage, T-Wing consumes less than 15× the energy and is faster by an order of magnitude. Full article
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11876 KiB  
Article
A Dimensionality Reduction-Based Multi-Step Clustering Method for Robust Vessel Trajectory Analysis
by Huanhuan Li, Jingxian Liu, Ryan Wen Liu, Naixue Xiong, Kefeng Wu and Tai-hoon Kim
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1792; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081792 - 4 Aug 2017
Cited by 160 | Viewed by 8363
Abstract
The Shipboard Automatic Identification System (AIS) is crucial for navigation safety and maritime surveillance, data mining and pattern analysis of AIS information have attracted considerable attention in terms of both basic research and practical applications. Clustering of spatio-temporal AIS trajectories can be used [...] Read more.
The Shipboard Automatic Identification System (AIS) is crucial for navigation safety and maritime surveillance, data mining and pattern analysis of AIS information have attracted considerable attention in terms of both basic research and practical applications. Clustering of spatio-temporal AIS trajectories can be used to identify abnormal patterns and mine customary route data for transportation safety. Thus, the capacities of navigation safety and maritime traffic monitoring could be enhanced correspondingly. However, trajectory clustering is often sensitive to undesirable outliers and is essentially more complex compared with traditional point clustering. To overcome this limitation, a multi-step trajectory clustering method is proposed in this paper for robust AIS trajectory clustering. In particular, the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), a similarity measurement method, is introduced in the first step to measure the distances between different trajectories. The calculated distances, inversely proportional to the similarities, constitute a distance matrix in the second step. Furthermore, as a widely-used dimensional reduction method, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is exploited to decompose the obtained distance matrix. In particular, the top k principal components with above 95% accumulative contribution rate are extracted by PCA, and the number of the centers k is chosen. The k centers are found by the improved center automatically selection algorithm. In the last step, the improved center clustering algorithm with k clusters is implemented on the distance matrix to achieve the final AIS trajectory clustering results. In order to improve the accuracy of the proposed multi-step clustering algorithm, an automatic algorithm for choosing the k clusters is developed according to the similarity distance. Numerous experiments on realistic AIS trajectory datasets in the bridge area waterway and Mississippi River have been implemented to compare our proposed method with traditional spectral clustering and fast affinity propagation clustering. Experimental results have illustrated its superior performance in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Full article
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714 KiB  
Article
Context- and Template-Based Compression for Efficient Management of Data Models in Resource-Constrained Systems
by Jorge Berzosa Macho, Luis Gardeazabal Montón and Roberto Cortiñas Rodriguez
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1755; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081755 - 1 Aug 2017
Viewed by 4505
Abstract
The Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) paradigm is based on the deployment of interconnected heterogeneous devices and systems, so interoperability is at the heart of any CPS architecture design. In this sense, the adoption of standard and generic data formats for data representation and [...] Read more.
The Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) paradigm is based on the deployment of interconnected heterogeneous devices and systems, so interoperability is at the heart of any CPS architecture design. In this sense, the adoption of standard and generic data formats for data representation and communication, e.g., XML or JSON, effectively addresses the interoperability problem among heterogeneous systems. Nevertheless, the verbosity of those standard data formats usually demands system resources that might suppose an overload for the resource-constrained devices that are typically deployed in CPS. In this work we present Context- and Template-based Compression (CTC), a data compression approach targeted to resource-constrained devices, which allows reducing the resources needed to transmit, store and process data models. Additionally, we provide a benchmark evaluation and comparison with current implementations of the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) processor, which is promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and it is the most prominent XML compression mechanism nowadays. Interestingly, the results from the evaluation show that CTC outperforms EXI implementations in terms of memory usage and speed, keeping similar compression rates. As a conclusion, CTC is shown to be a good candidate for managing standard data model representation formats in CPS composed of resource-constrained devices. Full article
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3292 KiB  
Article
IoT Service Clustering for Dynamic Service Matchmaking
by Shuai Zhao, Le Yu, Bo Cheng and Junliang Chen
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1727; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081727 - 27 Jul 2017
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4583
Abstract
As the adoption of service-oriented paradigms in the IoT (Internet of Things) environment, real-world devices will open their capabilities through service interfaces, which enable other functional entities to interact with them. In an IoT application, it is indispensable to find suitable services for [...] Read more.
As the adoption of service-oriented paradigms in the IoT (Internet of Things) environment, real-world devices will open their capabilities through service interfaces, which enable other functional entities to interact with them. In an IoT application, it is indispensable to find suitable services for satisfying users’ requirements or replacing the unavailable services. However, from the perspective of performance, it is inappropriate to find desired services from the service repository online directly. Instead, clustering services offline according to their similarity and matchmaking or discovering service online in limited clusters is necessary. This paper proposes a multidimensional model-based approach to measure the similarity between IoT services. Then, density-peaks-based clustering is employed to gather similar services together according to the result of similarity measurement. Based on the service clustering, the algorithms of dynamic service matchmaking, discovery, and replacement will be performed efficiently. Evaluating experiments are conducted to validate the performance of proposed approaches, and the results are promising. Full article
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6721 KiB  
Article
A Novel Dual Separate Paths (DSP) Algorithm Providing Fault-Tolerant Communication for Wireless Sensor Networks
by Nguyen Xuan Tien, Semog Kim, Jong Myung Rhee and Sang Yoon Park
Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1699; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081699 - 25 Jul 2017
Cited by 51 | Viewed by 4795
Abstract
Fault tolerance has long been a major concern for sensor communications in fault-tolerant cyber physical systems (CPSs). Network failure problems often occur in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to various factors such as the insufficient power of sensor nodes, the dislocation of sensor [...] Read more.
Fault tolerance has long been a major concern for sensor communications in fault-tolerant cyber physical systems (CPSs). Network failure problems often occur in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to various factors such as the insufficient power of sensor nodes, the dislocation of sensor nodes, the unstable state of wireless links, and unpredictable environmental interference. Fault tolerance is thus one of the key requirements for data communications in WSN applications. This paper proposes a novel path redundancy-based algorithm, called dual separate paths (DSP), that provides fault-tolerant communication with the improvement of the network traffic performance for WSN applications, such as fault-tolerant CPSs. The proposed DSP algorithm establishes two separate paths between a source and a destination in a network based on the network topology information. These paths are node-disjoint paths and have optimal path distances. Unicast frames are delivered from the source to the destination in the network through the dual paths, providing fault-tolerant communication and reducing redundant unicast traffic for the network. The DSP algorithm can be applied to wired and wireless networks, such as WSNs, to provide seamless fault-tolerant communication for mission-critical and life-critical applications such as fault-tolerant CPSs. The analyzed and simulated results show that the DSP-based approach not only provides fault-tolerant communication, but also improves network traffic performance. For the case study in this paper, when the DSP algorithm was applied to high-availability seamless redundancy (HSR) networks, the proposed DSP-based approach reduced the network traffic by 80% to 88% compared with the standard HSR protocol, thus improving network traffic performance. Full article
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5053 KiB  
Article
Hierarchical Stereo Matching in Two-Scale Space for Cyber-Physical System
by Eunah Choi, Sangyoon Lee and Hyunki Hong
Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1680; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071680 - 21 Jul 2017
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5561
Abstract
Dense disparity map estimation from a high-resolution stereo image is a very difficult problem in terms of both matching accuracy and computation efficiency. Thus, an exhaustive disparity search at full resolution is required. In general, examining more pixels in the stereo view results [...] Read more.
Dense disparity map estimation from a high-resolution stereo image is a very difficult problem in terms of both matching accuracy and computation efficiency. Thus, an exhaustive disparity search at full resolution is required. In general, examining more pixels in the stereo view results in more ambiguous correspondences. When a high-resolution image is down-sampled, the high-frequency components of the fine-scaled image are at risk of disappearing in the coarse-resolution image. Furthermore, if erroneous disparity estimates caused by missing high-frequency components are propagated across scale space, ultimately, false disparity estimates are obtained. To solve these problems, we introduce an efficient hierarchical stereo matching method in two-scale space. This method applies disparity estimation to the reduced-resolution image, and the disparity result is then up-sampled to the original resolution. The disparity estimation values of the high-frequency (or edge component) regions of the full-resolution image are combined with the up-sampled disparity results. In this study, we extracted the high-frequency areas from the scale-space representation by using difference of Gaussian (DoG) or found edge components, using a Canny operator. Then, edge-aware disparity propagation was used to refine the disparity map. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous methods. Full article
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9267 KiB  
Article
Minding the Cyber-Physical Gap: Model-Based Analysis and Mitigation of Systemic Perception-Induced Failure
by Yaniv Mordecai and Dov Dori
Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1644; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071644 - 17 Jul 2017
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 5629
Abstract
The cyber-physical gap (CPG) is the difference between the ‘real’ state of the world and the way the system perceives it. This discrepancy often stems from the limitations of sensing and data collection technologies and capabilities, and is inevitable at some degree in [...] Read more.
The cyber-physical gap (CPG) is the difference between the ‘real’ state of the world and the way the system perceives it. This discrepancy often stems from the limitations of sensing and data collection technologies and capabilities, and is inevitable at some degree in any cyber-physical system (CPS). Ignoring or misrepresenting such limitations during system modeling, specification, design, and analysis can potentially result in systemic misconceptions, disrupted functionality and performance, system failure, severe damage, and potential detrimental impacts on the system and its environment. We propose CPG-Aware Modeling & Engineering (CPGAME), a conceptual model-based approach to capturing, explaining, and mitigating the CPG. CPGAME enhances the systems engineer’s ability to cope with CPGs, mitigate them by design, and prevent erroneous decisions and actions. We demonstrate CPGAME by applying it for modeling and analysis of the 1979 Three Miles Island 2 nuclear accident, and show how its meltdown could be mitigated. We use ISO-19450:2015—Object Process Methodology as our conceptual modeling framework. Full article
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23105 KiB  
Article
SLAE–CPS: Smart Lean Automation Engine Enabled by Cyber-Physical Systems Technologies
by Jing Ma, Qiang Wang and Zhibiao Zhao
Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1500; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071500 - 28 Jun 2017
Cited by 87 | Viewed by 11943
Abstract
In the context of Industry 4.0, the demand for the mass production of highly customized products will lead to complex products and an increasing demand for production system flexibility. Simply implementing lean production-based human-centered production or high automation to improve system flexibility is [...] Read more.
In the context of Industry 4.0, the demand for the mass production of highly customized products will lead to complex products and an increasing demand for production system flexibility. Simply implementing lean production-based human-centered production or high automation to improve system flexibility is insufficient. Currently, lean automation (Jidoka) that utilizes cyber-physical systems (CPS) is considered a cost-efficient and effective approach for improving system flexibility under shrinking global economic conditions. Therefore, a smart lean automation engine enabled by CPS technologies (SLAE–CPS), which is based on an analysis of Jidoka functions and the smart capacity of CPS technologies, is proposed in this study to provide an integrated and standardized approach to design and implement a CPS-based smart Jidoka system. A set of comprehensive architecture and standardized key technologies should be presented to achieve the above-mentioned goal. Therefore, a distributed architecture that joins service-oriented architecture, agent, function block (FB), cloud, and Internet of things is proposed to support the flexible configuration, deployment, and performance of SLAE–CPS. Then, several standardized key techniques are proposed under this architecture. The first one is for converting heterogeneous physical data into uniform services for subsequent abnormality analysis and detection. The second one is a set of Jidoka scene rules, which is abstracted based on the analysis of the operator, machine, material, quality, and other factors in different time dimensions. These Jidoka rules can support executive FBs in performing different Jidoka functions. Finally, supported by the integrated and standardized approach of our proposed engine, a case study is conducted to verify the current research results. The proposed SLAE–CPS can serve as an important reference value for combining the benefits of innovative technology and proper methodology. Full article
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3706 KiB  
Article
Privacy-Preserving Electrocardiogram Monitoring for Intelligent Arrhythmia Detection
by Junggab Son, Juyoung Park, Heekuck Oh, Md Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan, Junbeom Hur and Kyungtae Kang
Sensors 2017, 17(6), 1360; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17061360 - 12 Jun 2017
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 7878
Abstract
Long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, as a representative application of cyber-physical systems, facilitates the early detection of arrhythmia. A considerable number of previous studies has explored monitoring techniques and the automated analysis of sensing data. However, ensuring patient privacy or confidentiality has not been [...] Read more.
Long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, as a representative application of cyber-physical systems, facilitates the early detection of arrhythmia. A considerable number of previous studies has explored monitoring techniques and the automated analysis of sensing data. However, ensuring patient privacy or confidentiality has not been a primary concern in ECG monitoring. First, we propose an intelligent heart monitoring system, which involves a patient-worn ECG sensor (e.g., a smartphone) and a remote monitoring station, as well as a decision support server that interconnects these components. The decision support server analyzes the heart activity, using the Pan–Tompkins algorithm to detect heartbeats and a decision tree to classify them. Our system protects sensing data and user privacy, which is an essential attribute of dependability, by adopting signal scrambling and anonymous identity schemes. We also employ a public key cryptosystem to enable secure communication between the entities. Simulations using data from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database demonstrate that our system achieves a 95.74% success rate in heartbeat detection and almost a 96.63% accuracy in heartbeat classification, while successfully preserving privacy and securing communications among the involved entities. Full article
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2530 KiB  
Article
A Family of ACO Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
by Delfín Rupérez Cañas, Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco, Luis Javier García Villalba and Tai-hoon Kim
Sensors 2017, 17(5), 1179; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051179 - 22 May 2017
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5219
Abstract
In this work, an ACO routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks based on AntHocNet is specified. As its predecessor, this new protocol, called AntOR, is hybrid in the sense that it contains elements from both reactive and proactive routing. Specifically, it combines [...] Read more.
In this work, an ACO routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks based on AntHocNet is specified. As its predecessor, this new protocol, called AntOR, is hybrid in the sense that it contains elements from both reactive and proactive routing. Specifically, it combines a reactive route setup process with a proactive route maintenance and improvement process. Key aspects of the AntOR protocol are the disjoint-link and disjoint-node routes, separation between the regular pheromone and the virtual pheromone in the diffusion process and the exploration of routes, taking into consideration the number of hops in the best routes. In this work, a family of ACO routing protocols based on AntOR is also specified. These protocols are based on protocol successive refinements. In this work, we also present a parallelized version of AntOR that we call PAntOR. Using programming multiprocessor architectures based on the shared memory protocol, PAntOR allows running tasks in parallel using threads. This parallelization is applicable in the route setup phase, route local repair process and link failure notification. In addition, a variant of PAntOR that consists of having more than one interface, which we call PAntOR-MI (PAntOR-Multiple Interface), is specified. This approach parallelizes the sending of broadcast messages by interface through threads. Full article
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4794 KiB  
Article
Bodily Expression Support for Creative Dance Education by Grasping-Type Musical Interface with Embedded Motion and Grasp Sensors
by Tomoyuki Yamaguchi and Hideki Kadone
Sensors 2017, 17(5), 1171; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051171 - 20 May 2017
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 6069
Abstract
Dance has been made mandatory as one of the physical education courses in Japan because it can cultivate capacities for expression and communication. Among several types of dance education, creative dance especially contributes to the cultivation of these capacities. However, creative dance requires [...] Read more.
Dance has been made mandatory as one of the physical education courses in Japan because it can cultivate capacities for expression and communication. Among several types of dance education, creative dance especially contributes to the cultivation of these capacities. However, creative dance requires some level of particular skills, as well as creativity, and it is difficult to presuppose these pre-requisites in beginner-level dancers without experience. We propose a novel supporting device for dance beginners to encourage creative dance performance by continuously generating musical sounds in real-time in accordance with their bodily movements. It has embedded sensors developed for this purpose. Experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the device were conducted with ten beginner-level dancers. Using the proposed device, the subjects demonstrated enhanced creative dance movements with greater variety, evaluated in terms of Laban dance movement description. Also, using the device, they performed with better accuracy and repeatability in a task where they produced an imagined circular trajectory by hand. The proposed interface is effective in terms of creative dance activity and accuracy of motion generation for beginner-level dancers. Full article
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